Why are many keepers so staunchly against hybrids?

[remington]

I am not here to defend it, because frankly I don't know enough about it to have an opinion on the matter. I'm just genuinely curious about the issues with it.

 

[MBullock]

causes intermediate hybrids that are impossible to identify which can then be passed off as the real deal. or cause confusion with taxonomists purchasing specimens for research.

Hybrids are boring. they just look like a seamless transition between the two, and they're often hideous imo LOL

 

[m0lsx]

Why are many keepers so staunchly against hybrids?

Just because something can be done, it does not make it right to do it & maybe we are largely against it, because we in the long run, will be as much the losers, as the tarantulas themselves.

 

[FishermanSteve]

I am 1000% against hybridization. It’s frustrating that we have to import wild caught specimens like brachypelmas and ceratogyrus because we have muddled the breeding stock in the US with hybrids. As responsible keepers and breeders we should be trying to keep the integrity of these species. Keepers always love to defend the hobby saying,”eventually there might not be any of these species in the wild but only in our collections.” Well, if that’s the case, we need to keep these species pure in the future event that these countries want to reintroduce the tarantulas into their native range.

 

[DustyD]

I agree with the previous posters. I want the real thing and hybridization just muddies the water. Who knows what genetic issues will develop from cross breeding.

 

[WolfSpider]

Nature rules. If the pairing doesn't occur possibly in nature (for example B. hamorii and B. smithi are separated by a wide river), it's kinda arrogant to think that we know better.

 

[NorseDad]

I think it's important to the hobby and to the world in general to keep these species pure. Many of them are becoming more and more endangered as human encroachment on their habitats continues. By keeping the species pure, we are able to effectively maintain a species that may one day disappear from the wild entirely.

I also believe there are many folks who think hybridizing two Brachypelma species is the same as say cross breeding different dog breeds. This is not the case as all domestic dogs are Canus lupis familiaris. Even though different breeds can be radically different, they are not hybrids.

Muddying the species does not help scientific or hobby community.

 

[Zanaspus]

Let me share a true story from the arena of fishkeeping. Back in the 80's, Haplochrimines (family cichlidae) from Lake Victoria were everywhere. They were cheap, colorful, and would interbreed with most sister species. Their availability coupled with the beauty of hybrids made folks not really care.

AND THEN, the incredibly incompetent authorities introduced the Nile Perch to the lake for "sport fishing." These huge eating machines quickly fed upon all the Haplochromines, and suddenly, all the beautiful wild specimens were gone leaving hybridized dead end (viability wise) specimens in the hobby and the loss of literally dozens of species.

If you are not concerned about conservation, I implore you to find a hobby not related to animal husbandry. It sounds harsh, but we're the only thing keeping some species from disappearing sooner rather than later.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Arachnoclown]

Alot of the tarantulas in the hobby are now band for import. So the last thing we need in the hobby is some retards screwing up the species.

 

[NorseDad]

Let me share a true story from the arena of fishkeeping. Back in the 80's, Haplochrimines (family cichlidae) from Lake Victoria were everywhere. They were cheap, colorful, and would interbreed with most sister species. Their availability coupled with the beauty of hybrids made folks not really care.

AND THEN, the incredibly incompetent authorities introduced the Nile Perch to the lake for "sport fishing." These huge eating machines quickly fed upon all the Haplochromines, and suddenly, all the beautiful wild specimens were gone leaving hybridized dead end (viability wise) specimens in the hobby and the loss of literally dozens of species.

If you are not concerned about conservation, I implore you to find a hobby not related to animal husbandry. It sounds harsh, but we're the only thing keeping some species from disappearing sooner rather than later.

Just my 2 cents.

I had no idea about this and read a few articles. That is a scary and sad tale of humanity's wonton destruction for the sake of food export profits.

 

[holotype]

I was reading through this thread and thought to do a little research, and found this article very interesting:

Hybrid Animals Are Not Nature’s Misfits

In the 20th century, animals such as mules and ligers that had parents of different species were considered biological flukes, but genetic sequencing is beginning to unravel the critical role of hybridization in evolution.

www.the-scientist.com

It even has a section that discusses African cichlid hybridization and have found this to have occurred in the wild.

The thousands of cichlids in Africa’s lakes​

Evidence for hybrid-driven adaptation is perhaps nowhere more profound than in the warm, tropical waters of Lake Victoria in Africa. There, more than 500 species of bony fishes called cichlids that sport brilliant orange, yellow, and blue hues, roam the lake’s 2,400 cubic kilometers. Some species eat only plants, others eat invertebrates, the bigger species eat other fish, and still more feed on Lake Victoria’s detritus. “There’s incredible diversity of species that live together in the same ecosystem,” evolutionary ecologist Ole Seehausen of the University of Bern tells The Scientist. “This struck me as a beautiful system, the interaction between ecology and evolution . . . to study speciation.”

When Seehausen began to study the lake’s cichlids roughly 30 years ago, it wasn’t clear how the hundreds of species there had evolved. They weren’t geographically isolated, a common driver of speciation. Rather, the fish were all living in the same lake and could interact, yet there was still incredible cichlid diversity. Something else appeared to be driving their speciation.


With continued observation, Seehausen and others found that the barriers preventing the species in the lakes from mating were rather “shallow,” with some of the major ones being behavioral in nature. Males, for example, were defending their territories from males of both the same and other species, or females were choosing flashing mates of only their own species. That last barrier, based on color signaling, began to break down, Seehausen says, when the clarity of the water diminished in the 1990s, a result of wastewater from farms and other human activities polluting the lake. “It turns out that when you change the visual signaling, and the perception of those signals, then not much more is needed to break down reproductive isolation, so many species then hybridize,” Seehausen says.

Something similar appears to have happened thousands of years ago in Lake Victoria. Genetic analyses of the cichlids have revealed that their vast diversity can be traced back to a hybridization of two divergent lineages around 150,000 years ago. And Lake Victoria wasn’t the only body of water in the region where hybridization appeared to play an important role in speciation. Further investigation revealed that cross-species mating had happened and continued to occur in nearby lakes, where it was driving cichlid diversity. “This was replicated in several different lakes across Africa,” Seehausen says.

As scientists began to look for other examples of hybridization in the wild, both past and present, they were not disappointed. Genetic analyses have revealed crosses between coyotes and gray wolves, polar bears and brown bears, chimpanzees and bonobos, finches in the Galapagos Islands, fish called sculpin, and even modern humans and Neanderthals.

 

[MBullock]

Hybrids often have really nasty health problems and 80% of the time theyre sterile.

Thats why there arent too many ligers or tigons its because they cant breed in most cases

 

[Zanaspus]

Hybrids often have really nasty health problems and 80% of the time theyre sterile.

Thats why there arent too many ligers or tigons its because they cant breed in most cases

And even worse, sometimes they become ungodly ugly staples of a hobby. *Points angrily* at the ubiquitous so-called Parrot cichlid of the aquarium hobby

 

[MBullock]

And even worse, sometimes they become ungodly ugly staples of a hobby. *Points angrily* at the ubiquitous so-called Parrot cichlid of the aquarium hobby

I caught one of those a while back while fishing. Half the time they cant even eat properly i was amazed it even got hooked

 

[Aracnoenthusiast]

I'm against it from the standpoint that if they wouldn't breed in the wild, due to geography or any other factors, then they shouldn't be bred in captivity.

 

[octanejunkie]

I'm all about hybrids, just not tarantulas.

If we could hybridize humans and goats we could just eat all the trash we've created and fertilize the land we've depleted of nutrients with our own bs

 

[Zanaspus]

I'm against it from the standpoint that if they wouldn't breed in the wild, due to geography or any other factors, then they shouldn't be bred in captivity.

My view on evolution and systematics as well. Sadly, the DNA monkeys seem to be gaining momentum.

 

[birdonfire]

The staunch disapproval of hybridization in the tarantula hobby (and the arthropod hobby in general) is something I admire about it. It is too freely encouraged in other biophilic hobbies without concern for its ramifications other than the chance to make money.

 

[AmbushArachnids]

The reason people hybrid animals is to supposedly improve its visual appeal.

The answer to your question is simple. Tarantulas need no improvement.

People would chop the rear split window out of there corvette in the 60’s. That was a stupid move.

 

[octanejunkie]

People would chop the rear split window out of there corvette in the 60’s. That was a stupid move.

Or replace the manual wing windows with larger power windows in 50's cars and trucks. I love the wing windows!